RBC TV celebrates its birthday business-style.

Yesterday the first Russian business television station RBC TV gathered friends for a party in Gostiny Dvor. The party was thrown to celebrate at least two occasions - another anniversary of the station being on air and the beginning of the new business year.

RBC TV's birthday is a big social party, which the business and political establishment of the Russian capital considers a pleasant duty to attend. Among the guests were Deputy State Duma Speaker Lyubov Sliska, Central Bank Senior Deputy Head Tatiana Paramonova, Sistema President Alexander Goncharuk, Chairman of Wimm-Bill-Dann's Board of Directors David Yakobashvili, Barclays Capital President Hans-Joerg Rudloff, TNK-BP President Robert Dudley, chairman of the International Task Force of Pediatric Disaster Medicine in the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine Leonid Roshal, presenter Nikolai Drozdov, lawyers Pavel Astakhov and Mikhail Barshchevsky, painter Nikas Safronov, and others.

"We did not want to have just another corporate party,' said RBC's General Director Yury Rovensky. 'Instead we decided to make a present for all our friends."

However, before celebrating a new business year it is important to analyze the results of the departing year and then see it off. The guests who gathered at Gostiny Dvor felt as if they were at a harvest festival. The capital's main atrium was filled with music and decorated with marzipan fruit and vegetables. The guests were greeted with bread and salt. The party organizers surprised the guests with different prizes. For instance, an airline gave away tickets for a tour of China and a tea company was giving away quality tea blends throughout the party.

AutoSpecCenter offered discounts on car purchases and a restaurant presented a chocolate box with a weighty golden coin hidden among candy. After a cocktail and a friendly chat, the guests could be TV stars for a while - they had to go through a decoration shaped as a TV screen to take their seats at the banquet. The entertainment show included performances by Sergei Mazayev accompanied by the Ivanov Brothers VIP Jazz Orchestra as well as numbers by leading performers from the Bolshoi Theater and young singers from TV show "The People's Artist". Since business people like to act ahead of time, Helen Yarmak presented a winter collection of fur coats.

Why is the beginning of the new business year celebrated in September? By the beginning of the fall people are coming back from their vacations and starting to think about how to earn money, rather than spend it. People are thinking about new jobs, new projects, studying their competitors, gathering all the necessary information. It is true that business life in Russia is still taking shape, but it already has its own traditions and symbols. And one of them is the birthday party of RBC TV - Russia's first and only 24-hour business television channel.